Are You Willing to Die for the Economy?

With the Covid-19 pandemic still raging across the country, President Trump and state governors, (including Gavin Newsom, of California, and Andrew Cuomo, of New York), are already talking about getting people back to work. Yet, as of now, there is no plan in place for doing this in a way that won't lead to hundreds of thousands of more deaths. Most of the health experts are saying that it is way too soon to relax social distancing policies.

Like with traffic fatalities, excess deaths from air pollution, and workplace mortality, our lives are expendable in the pursuit of corporate profits. Our injuries, sickness and deaths are merely costs of doing business.

Trump and others have argued that the cure is worse than the disease. No question about it, people are suffering, including healthy people who no longer have an income or enough food to eat. People are waiting in lines that are miles long, just get food from food banks. They're going stir crazy from being cooped up in their houses, deprived of social and physical contact with their friends, family and neighbors. But if people are forced back to work prematurely, while the pandemic is still raging, without adequate social distancing measures and personal protective equipment, AND most importantly, universal testing, contact tracing and mandatory quarantining of all infected individuals and their contacts, we will not only see a dramatic increase in new infections and deaths, but we could see far greater disruptions in the production and distribution of basic necessities, like food, water and utilities, because so many workers in these essential services have become sickened. 

Famine is already a very real possibility in many of the poorer nations of the global south, but with the proposed economic cure of sending us back to work prematurely, we could easily see famine here, in the United States, as well. While the wealthiest Americans will survive in their fortified bunkers and offshore retreats, with their stockpiles of toilet paper and prime rib, they will see their corporate profits plummet even more than they currently are, when so many Americans become sick that their businesses will no longer be able to operate, and their consumers are dropping like flies.

If that happens, the economic cure will prove to be far worse (both economically and in terms of human life) than the current social distancing program.